Journal of Scientific Research in Physical & Mathematical Science

Volume (2) Issue (4) Year (2015)

ISSN: 2349-7149

PION-PRODUCTION IN NEUTRINONUCLEUS INTERACTIONS

Qudsia Gani*, Waseem Bari, Muzamil A. Teli, Shamsul H.
Thoker
Department of Physics, University of Kashmir Srinagar India190006

ABSTRACT
When neutrino interactions take place in the nucleus, the secondary particles or
the hadrons that are produced, can interact with the nuclear medium thus modifying
the observed characteristics of the interactions. At each point of their path it is
decided if there was an interaction or not. In the present study, this has been done
based on an effective cross-section model, using Wroclaw Neutrino generator,
NuWro. In this context, the production of pions induced by neutrinos is of much
interest because pions are particularly susceptible to the effects of the nuclear
medium, since these interact via the strong nuclear force.
The nuclear medium can also influence whether a pion is even created. All these
factors have a direct bearing on the cross-sections. Therefore, in the present study,
the cross-sections for pion production in the neutrino interactions with matter using
NuWro have been measured and compared with the results of other neutrino
generators to highlight the consistencies or inconsistencies therein. The target chosen
for the neutrino interactions in this study is oxygen, for being abundant in
atmosphere.

Keywords: Neutrino-nucleus interactions, Neutrino oscillations, Pion-production,

Cross-sections, Flavor symmetries, Decay of pions, Decay of muons

Received: 10 March 2015

Accepted: 30 March 2015

Corresponding author: qudsiagani6@gmail.com

Published: 28 April 2015

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1. INTRODUCTION:
The quest for determination of neutrino oscillation parameters forces us to
do neutrino physics in the first few GeV energies, where atmospheric neutrinos are
observed to oscillate. In this energy region of neutrino-nucleus interactions, the crosssections are dominated by quasi-elastic charged-current process [1]. Therefore, it is
preferred to study this process extensively to perform a better and refined measurement
of neutrino cross-sections. However, as a number of other processes [2] are also
contributing simultaneously to neutrino cross-sections in this energy region, it has been
observed that the enhanced cross-sections due to QE processes are actually representing
some illusions on account of the fact that in a pion-production principal interaction if the
pion is absorbed in the final state interactions, the process appears to be quasi-elastic
which is characterized by zero pion topologies in the end. Such discrepancies have led to
theoretical re-examination of this process [3].
Therefore a foolproof measurement of neutrino cross-sections requires a proper
recognition of the events as QE or otherwise. Keeping in view the fact that there is a
spurt in the studies on pion-production in neutrino-nucleus interactions, it is worthwhile
to look into some of the aspects of these interactions which has been done in the present
work. Therefore the cross-sections for coherent pion-production induced by interaction
of muon neutrinos with molecular oxygen due to their larger availability in the
atmosphere have been measured and the analogies and differences between this process
and the related ones have been compared and discussed.
2. PRODUCTION AND DECAY OF PIONS:
At neutrino energies below a few GeV, the most common neutrino interactions are those
that minimally affect the interaction target. Here, the inelastic scattering of neutrinos
produces a nucleon excited state (, N*). Such baryonic resonances quickly decay most
often to a nucleon and a single pion in the final state as shown in the following Feynman
diagrams.

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Fig1. Pion-production in charged-current and neutral-current resonant

interactions.
In charged-current pion-production processes, the pion always decays (99.99 percent of
the time) to a muon and a muon neutrino [4].
+ + +
Since pion decays into two particles, the conservation of momentum and energy gives
definite energies to the final products. The decay proceeds by the weak interaction and
can be visualized in terms of the following Feynman diagrams.

Fig2. Feynman diagram for muon decay

The muon neutrino interacts with a nucleus to produce a muon and not an electron due
to conservation of lepton number. Appearance of a muon instead of a pion mistakes the
event for being counted as quasi-elastic, since these are characterized by zero pion
topologies in the initial as well as the final states. Moreover, the inclusion of other
nuclear effects such as mean field potential, pauli blocking and fermi motion etc. is
equally important and has necessitated a dedicated campaign of new measurements [2,
5]. A full description of the pion-production also requires a realistic treatment of the final
state interactions FSI [6] as well.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:

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In the present study, the cross-sections for the production of pions in the neutrino
interactions with oxygen target have been measured using NuWro and plotted as follows.

Fig3. Cross-sections for pion production

The result is similar of a fit to the elementary pion production data, extrapolated to
higher energies, and compared with the NEUT [7] and GENIE [8] neutrino generators.
Charged pions can either be absorbed or converted into neutral pions via:
n + + p + o
The pion absorption cross-sections on oxygen using NuWro as measured by
some workers [9-12] shows a reasonably expected reverse trend from our results of pion
production cross-sections.
Most of the simulation generators are based on the impulse approximation scheme: the
degrees of freedom are quasi-free nucleons and a primary interaction occurs on one of
them [13]. This is followed by final state interactions (FSI), i.e., the pions propagate
through nucleus before these can be detected. The NuWro FSI code has recently been
updated by implementing the Oset model [14] of effective pion-nucleon cross-sections.
The neutrino interaction point is selected inside the nucleus according to the nuclear
matter density. All secondary hadrons propagate through nucleus and can interact with
the nucleons inside. The FSI effects are known to be large. These mix QE (quasi-elastic)
and SPP (single pion production) primary vertex events and give rise to QE-like (no pion
in the final state) and SPP-like (a single pion in the final state) events with the
nomenclature referring to the particles which leave nucleus. Because FSI effects involve
complicated nuclear physics effects, there are uncertainties associated with any approach.
As this study has mainly been restricted to single pion production (SPP) and QE
processes, the cross-sections for these processes without considering FSI using NuWro
event generator for muon neutrino beam energy around 1 GeV energy have been plotted
to see how these look different from the results of other workers [15] where FSI is taken
into consideration.
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Fig4. Neutrino-nucleus cross-sections without FSI

The clear inference is that cross-sections saturate at larger energies as FSI is left
off and as FSI is kept on, the interactions of produced pions lead to pions being absorbed
in the nucleus or re-scattered, thus reducing the cross-sections. Therefore, the impact of
nuclear effects on observables is dramatic.
In order to verify it further, the following table has been prepared using NuWro based on
the simulations carried out by various workers [13] where the probabilities of fate of
single pions produced at the primary vertex in 1 GeV muon neutrino interactions on
oxygen target through both charged-current and neutral-current modes have been
evaluated.

Table1. Rate of events with single pion or no pion in final state if there was single
pion in the initial state.
The results indicate that pions are more likely to be absorbed than created.
4. SUMMARY:
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Gani et al.
While most event generators are similar in their treatment of the initial neutrino-nucleus
interactions, these differ substantially in their treatment of the final-state interactions in
the target nucleus. Based on calculations with GENIE and NEUT, one can make a rough
statement that about 40 percent of the pions with energies close to the resonance have
FSI for oxygen. For low energy and high energy pions, this fraction falls to about 20
percent. For protons in oxygen, the fraction is about half, slightly lower at low energies
and slightly higher at higher energies. The question is should we focus on pion nucleus
cross-sections? How useful is the pion transparency data? But there is also quite a lot of
implicit FSI data coming from the neutrino experiments. In this work, a preliminary
study in terms of only the cross-sections of the various processes using the NuWro event
generator has been described.

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